The day has come: someone else needs access to BookHero. Could be your business partner, the colleague who started this week, or the trainee who only comes in on Wednesdays. The good news: setup takes 5 minutes per person, and the email invite handles the boring part of creating the account.
This guide takes you from invite to the first booking that shows up in the employee's column on the calendar. We'll cover the 4 available roles, the services matrix (who performs what), the individual schedule (which can be totally different from the business hours), and formal time off with reasons.
Where everything lives: /dashboard/employees
All team management lives under Employees in the side menu. The page has three tabs: the list (where you add, edit and assign services), Schedules (base hours and time off per person), and Commissions (commission rules per service or product). Let's start at the beginning.
Send the invite: step by step
Go to Employees and click 'Add employee'
Button at the top of the list. Opens the invite panel on the right.
Fill in name and email
Name shows up on the calendar, on the booking detail and on the public page (if bookable). Email is the key: that's where the invite link is sent and what the person will use to log in.
Pick the role
Owner, manager, employee or basic. Each role has different permissions (we'll compare them below). When in doubt, 'employee' is the closest match to a typical staff member.
Toggle 'bookable' (or not)
Bookable means this person appears as an option on the public page. For back-office people (front desk, manager who doesn't serve clients), turn it off: the account still works, but it doesn't consume a billable seat and doesn't show up for client choice.
Send the invite
'Send invite' button. The system creates a record in team_invites, generates a unique tokenised link, and sends the email automatically. The employee shows up in the list right away tagged 'pending'.
The employee accepts
Clicks the email link, creates an account with password or Google, and automatically joins the team. The 'pending' tag disappears and they become an active member.
Assign services and schedule
By default, a bookable invite is already authorised to perform every service of the business. To restrict, open the services matrix ('Edit services' on the profile) and uncheck what they don't do. Then go to Schedules and set their hours if different from the business.
Pending vs active: what changes
Until the employee clicks the link and creates the account, their row is marked 'pending'. Even while pending, you can already: assign services, set the schedule, configure commissions and book them into appointments (their name shows up in the calendar column). Once they accept, all those settings stay attached to the new account automatically.
If the email doesn't arrive (spam folder, wrong address), you have two options on the invite row: 'Resend invite' (sends the email again to the same address) or 'Copy link' (gives you the URL to send via WhatsApp or any other way). Links expire after a while, but resending generates a fresh valid one.
The 4 roles: what each one can do
BookHero has four roles. Picking the right one matters because it defines what the person sees and can change. There's no granular permission editor, but these 4 roles cover virtually every real-world scenario.
| Capability | Owner | Manager | Employee | Basic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Own calendar | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Everyone's calendar | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Create and cancel bookings | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Run checkout | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| View and edit clients | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Invite and remove team | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Business settings (services, hours, public page) | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Full reports | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Manage everyone's schedule and time off | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Manage team commissions | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| View own commissions | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Plan and billing | Yes | No | No | No |
| Transfer business ownership | Yes | No | No | No |
- Owner: everything. One person per business. The account that pays and controls plan, billing and security.
- Manager: almost everything, except billing and ownership transfer. Good for the right hand running day-to-day operations.
- Employee: calendar, bookings, clients and checkout. Doesn't see consolidated reports or business settings. The most common role.
- Basic: only sees what concerns them (own calendar, own commissions). Doesn't create bookings or run checkout. Useful for trainees, part-time therapists, or someone who only needs to read their agenda.
Bookable: a toggle that changes more than it looks
When you invite someone, you'll see a 'Bookable' switch. Small but consequential. Here's how it works:
- Bookable on: the employee appears on the public page as an option (photo, name, services they perform). Counts towards the plan (every bookable employee consumes one billable seat).
- Bookable off: the account still works for internal use. They can have a calendar, be booked into appointments by the owner, run checkout. But they don't show up for clients on the public page and don't count towards the plan.
Typically, client-facing professionals are bookable (stylists, therapists, estheticians). The front desk person, the accountant or the non-serving manager are not. You can toggle it anytime on the employee profile, subject to plan limits.
Employees x Services matrix: who does what
Each employee has a list of services they perform. By default, when you invite a bookable person, they're authorised to perform everything. You restrict from there: on the employee profile, 'Edit services' opens a list with checkboxes to check / uncheck.
This matrix has two main effects:
- On the public page: a client who picks a service only sees the employees authorised to perform it. If only Rita does manicures, only Rita shows up when manicure is the picked service.
- On the internal calendar: when you manually create a booking and pick an employee who doesn't have the service assigned, the system warns but doesn't block. You can proceed with confirmation. Handy for day-to-day cases where the colleague just learned a new service and you haven't updated the matrix yet.
Individual schedule: when it differs from the business
BookHero has two layers of hours. The base business hours (e.g. the salon opens Monday to Saturday, 9am-7pm) and the individual hours of each employee, which can match the business or be different. The rule is simple: the intersection of business hours and employee hours is what the public page shows.
- If the employee has no individual hours set, they inherit the business hours.
- If they have individual hours, those win. Could be a narrower window (business open 9am-7pm, they only work 2pm-6pm) or different days (business open six days, they only come in three).
- Date-specific overrides (close one day, open earlier on a date) sit at a third layer: per-date 'overrides', for both the business and individual employees.
To set it up, head to Employees > Schedules, pick the person and edit day by day. Each day accepts an open time, close time and breaks (lunch, mid-day training). If a day is off, mark 'closed'.
Formal time off: vacation, sick days, training
For planned absences, BookHero has a dedicated time off system with reason and approval status. Not the same as blocking an interval on the calendar: time off is a formal record that shows up in reports and carries a reason (personal, sick, vacation, training, etc.).
- Reason types: personal, sick, vacation, training, no-show, late start, early leave, other.
- Approval: owner or manager can approve or leave it pending. Approved time off triggers a warning when creating bookings in that window.
- Duration: can be a full day or just a few hours. A single day or a date range (e.g. 5 days of vacation).
- Note: free text field to record the actual reason ('wedding', 'doctor's appointment').
For one-off adjustments that aren't time off (team lunch, mid-week internal training), the recommended path is to create a calendar block directly with the 'Block' FAB. Lighter, no reason needed, no impact on attendance reports.
How the employee shows up on bookings
Once everything is configured, the employee starts showing up in the right places:
Commissions: linking who does what to what they earn
If you pay commissions to the team, BookHero has configurable rules per employee and per service (or product). Under Employees > Commissions you set:
- Type: percentage (e.g. 30% of the price) or fixed amount (e.g. 5 € per service).
- Target: per specific service, per product, or a global rule for the employee.
- Who sees: the employee only sees their own commissions (read-only). Owner and manager edit everyone's.
Commissions are computed based on what was actually charged at checkout (not the catalogue price), so one-off discounts automatically flow through.
Common questions and gotchas
The employee didn't get the invite email. What now?
First check the email is spelled right (typos happen). Then ask them to check spam or promotions. If still nothing, open the invite row and use 'Resend invite' or 'Copy link' to share via WhatsApp. The link is unique per invite, no need to create a new one.
Can I invite two people with the same email?
No. Email is the employee's identity key. If the same person works at two different businesses you own (within the same BookHero account), they can be associated with both, but it's still a single email. For two different people, each needs their own email.
I marked an employee as non-bookable. Do they still show on the calendar?
Yes, on the internal calendar they appear as always - you can create bookings for them if needed (e.g. a manager who occasionally serves a VIP). What changes is only the public page: they no longer appear for client selection, and they don't count towards the billable seats on your plan.
I want an employee to have a totally different schedule from the business. How?
Go to Employees > Schedules, pick the person and edit day by day. Even if the business opens Monday to Saturday, you can define that this employee only works Tuesday to Thursday, 2pm-8pm. The public page only shows slots when BOTH are open: the business AND the employee.
Can I prevent an employee from seeing colleagues' agendas?
Yes: give them the 'basic' role. That role only sees their own calendar. The other roles (manager, employee) see everyone's. There's no middle layer with separate agendas but checkout permission, so it's a choice between the full pack and the restricted pack.
Day-to-day best practices
- Set up services, base business hours and commission rules BEFORE inviting. Avoids the awkward silence of the first login.
- Use 'employee' as the default role. Promote to 'manager' only when the person needs to invite others or edit settings. Demote to 'basic' only for very restricted cases.
- Keep the Employees x Services matrix updated: when someone learns a new service, check it right away. The 'employee can't perform' warning stops popping up on the calendar.
- For long absences (vacation), use the formal time off system with reason. For ad-hoc blocks (team lunch today), use the 'Block' FAB on the calendar.
- Before removing an employee who left, make sure pending commissions are computed and paid. History stays untouched, but their report access is cut.
Related next steps
- To create the first manual booking and see how the employee shows up, read: /blog/create-manual-booking-in-calendar.
- To close a one-off interval on the calendar (lunch, internal training), read: /blog/block-time-on-calendar.